Sara has had a busy week, meeting with different health care professionals to learn about the next step that she is about to embark. She has “stacks and stacks” of documents at home, but I will just mention some of the main points. There is a kind of standard regimen of chemotherapy approaches to combating colon cancer:  Eloxatin (generic – oxaliplatin), Efudex (also known as 5-FU), Avastin, and Xeloda are some. Then there are names for combination therapies – FOLFOX:  combination treatment of 5-FU, folinic acid, and oxaliplatin, FLOX: combination with bolus dose 5-FU, folinic acid, and oxaliplatin, etc.

Sara will start tomorrow with Eloxatin and 5-FU. After a few hours of chemo therapy via her port, she will then go home with a portable pump, which will keep delivering chemo for about 48 more hours. On Wednesday she goes back to the chemo center to have the pump removed. Then she will have 10 days without chemo, and start the cycle on Monday again. In about a month she may also add Avastin to the mix. After 2 months, CT scans will measure the effect of the chemo treatment.

On paper (or screen), this process sounds pretty straight-forward. But as most people know, these drugs are lethal killers – seeking out the cancer cells which is good, but they also don’t discriminate. So please think good thoughts for Sara tomorrow as she kicks off her fight against colon cancer, and that she won’t have much in the way of side effects from the treatment!

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